Magee was raised in
St. Petersburg,
Florida. A sometime-songwriter for
Jesse Stone, Magee recorded several near-hits on
Ray Charles's Tangerine label in the early 1960s, including "Get in My Arms Little Girl." In the late 1970s, Magee gave up guitar, refused to be identified by his birth-name and demanded that his associates call him 'Satan'. His longtime friend and business manager,
Bobby Robinson rented him an apartment and put a guitar in his hands. Soon Magee was strolling the streets, playing for what he later referred to as his "wino buddies." By 1983, he had added a hi-hat cymbal to his mix and begun to perform as a one-man band on
125th Street Gussow, a semi-seasoned street performer by this point, sat in. On May 5, 2013, the duo performed at Jazzfest in New Orleans, their first appearance there since their debut in 1991. A feature-length documentary on the duo entitled
Satan & Adam, directed by award-winning filmmaker V. Scott Balcerek and featuring cameos by
The Edge,
Rev. Al Sharpton, journalist
Peter Noel, and others, was as of June 2019 streaming on
Netflix. On September 6, 2020, Magee died in hospice care of complications from
COVID-19 in
Gulfport, Florida. == Discography ==